Oct 15, 2004

What About Losers?

New word that the eBay market in Asia is huge: alert reader Brian Whitener of Game Guides Online tips us off that Newsweek International has a report about item farmers in Lineage. Occasional TN commenter and SOP II speakerIan MacInnes is quoted comparing gold pieces to Bolivian money - in truth, is one any better than the other? The heavy newsbit: The Korean market is said to support 200 companies with a total of $83 to $415 million in annual revenues. That's a lot of gold, more than even I thought {/em shakes his head}.

The incentives that drive eBaying make sense. It's a trade of money for time, produced by design choices that prevent time-starved players from keeping up (and from enjoying not keeping up). Now, haven't we wrestled with this in other contexts? If you have a game of open competition with persistent rewards, and where the rewards can be used to compete better, losers just fall behind. Motor City Online died because only a few people ever won races and everyone else got sick of losing. So how do you keep those who fall behind motivated?

Hypothetical example to whet the mind: imagine there's an economic game where, if you happen to have some money, you could have the worst disaster befall your fortunes, be thrown in jail even, and STILL you will end up making more money going forward than people who didn't have as much at the start of the game. It's just food for thought, I'm not suggestingthathappens in therealworld.

Comments

1.

Now, haven't we wrestled with this in other contexts?
We certainly have. For example, football has a salary cap, which limits the ability of winners to build upon their success. It's one of the reasons why football's viewership grows while basketball and baseball viewership decreases.

Fundamentally, when winning and losing is a zero sum game, you're going to always get into trouble - that's one of the reasons why games that lean heavily on coop PvE like Everquest succeed where PvP games struggle more - in EQ, everyone can win. There's a lot less drama than in Shadowbane, but a lot less crushed spirits as well.

Another interesting angle is to consider lateral advancement. Magic the Gathering does this (and Guild Wars is heading in this direction) there's a near infinite number of spells you can collect, but you can only take 40 spells into battle with you in a duel. New players can compete with 'common' cards, but hardcore players get more interesting and intricate cards to play. The balance is tricky, but its certainly a lot easier to do than making it feel fair anytime a level 15 player and a level 50 player set foot on the same battlefield in a standard MMO.

The problem in rewarding success is that the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. There are two ways to solve this.

First, you can reset the game. You see this in ladder tournaments like Warcraft, for example. It isn't palatable in MMO's because people don't want to lose their alter egos.

Second, you can make victory its own reward and "prop up" the losers so they can better compete. It sounds antithetical to the whole concept of winning, but we do have examples where it works well. Counterstrike, for example, gives more money to consistent round losers so they can buy better gear and hopefully put up a better fight in the next round. Planetside gave (small) bonuses to underpopulated sides.

Axecleaver - Second, you can make victory its own reward and "prop up" the losers so they can better compete. It sounds antithetical to the whole concept of winning,

This has worked quite well in practice on lots of older MUDs. There are several PVP "good vs. evil" MUDs that split the players into a large group of "Good" players with advantages, and a small group of "Evil" players that get disadvantages in the game. So, you get the situation where being evil is "cool" so everyone wants to do it, and things can become unbalanced, but when I ran one of these games, I was very unfair.

I made it really easy on the good side by giving them lots of easy monsters with lots of loot to kill near their protected home city, and they couldn't harm each other. They also got an advantage in pkill by being somewhat resistant to evil. The evil side had worse areas, less protection, the ability to kill each other, and this nasty maze they had to die in repeatedly before they could get out into the world. I kept the sides balanced because you had a large good side filled with so-so players, and some players who were good, but not great, vs a small group of really good players. The really good players want a challenge, and if you handicap them, the skilled players (not the wannabees) will rise to the occasion and make for a fun game.

The other advantage is that since there were so few killers, they couldn't kill the other players as much, and the other players had a chance of dying, but they wouldn't each be killed that often because there were so many of them. And, the evil players could never control the map. At best, they could perform quick raids and then run before a giant army of good players smashed them. I don't know if this would scale well beyond the 30-40 people we would have online at a time, but I am a believer in not being fair to all players so that the better players get a challenge, and the worse players have a chance.

The problem appears only if the winners and the losers are in some form of direct competition. In PvP games that is automatically the case, but even PvE games have for example high-level people "farming" items that were designed for lower levels.

There is now a trend towards games with "instanced" zones, in which there is no competition. So everybody is a winner, because he finishes his quest and gets some reward, without seeing the other players finish a harder quest and getting a better reward. But of course that solution comes at a price: Reduced social interaction between players.

sounds good... reward winners with status prizes that don't affect winnability... console losers with consolation prizes that help out their weaknesses but be careful not to overdo it. Like letting the losing sports teams have first draft...

Axecleaver - "You can reset the game. You see this in ladder tournaments like Warcraft, for example. It isn't palatable in MMO's because people don't want to lose their alter egos."

Yes, unlike MMOs, all that survives such finite session-based games as Warcraft is one’s statistics. The alter ego (the player’s hero, town, army, etc.) disappear into either a win or loss statistic, an unthinkable prospect for MMOGers who grow attached to their avatar’s appearance, possessions, and statistics.

But why can’t there be a middle ground? Let’s say the game is not zero-sum – it does not have a finite amount of resources that when exhausted force an end to the game session. What if players can reset/start a new session and keep playing and succeeding, a type of big bang game session that can last and thrive indefinitely if players employ the necessary skill?

And if, as Professor Castranova proposed, a player gets thrown in jail, goes bankrupt, etc., then she can start/join a different world, though she will carry with her the reputation (represented through statistics) of that prior experience.

The point is that maybe a session-based approach to gaming need not be close-ended but can evolve into persistence, while still allowing for the possibility of a fresh start.

There is now a trend towards games with "instanced" zones, in which there is no competition. So everybody is a winner, because he finishes his quest and gets some reward, without seeing the other players finish a harder quest and getting a better reward. But of course that solution comes at a price: Reduced social interaction between players.
At the same time, when there is so little competition, the game suffers from lack of competition. Players like to compete, it gives meaning to them, and gives guilds something to achieve.

" Motor City Online died because only a few people ever won races and everyone else got sick of losing."

No, MCO died for several reasons:

1) Complete lack of developer support (towards the end, prior to the announcement of cancellation, they had ONE developer for the entire game)

2) Unflexible, inflation-ridden economy (one part for a car could go for hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the "game-sanctioned" parts catalog, which would have been a good money sink, had parts for several hundred)

3) Absolutely ZERO competition. Everyone won. There was win-swapping going on in supposed "competitive" racing with nothing done about it. People would trade wins back and forth for hours, and then have millions to spend on their favorite cars. Exploits, cheaters, and scammers ruled the universe there.

4) Lack of fun. The most people you could race at a time was 4, and it was an ordeal getting even that many people going at once. Most folks enjoyed playing "nascar" and running around the same oval tracks for days on end (literally), while the more interesting tracks went totally unused. The same "killer" car types were used by all the power gamers... the list goes on and on.

The game concept was amazing, it's just that EA decided to kill it before it was born. Just like every other MMORPG they've released since Ultima.

You can do limited resets. For instance, WW2OL resets the map and production vehicles and the "date" whenever one side conquers enough territory and "wins" the war. Players keep their stats and ranking, though, and since it's mostly skill-based, this doesn't mean all that much.

Professional sports also has limited resets. Each year, the score is reset, and everyone tries again. While teams that spend more money on player salaries may generally have a better chance, there's still a chance every year for the little guy.

Another way to solve the problem is retirement. At a certain point, pro sports players just can't play any more, and one could certainly force MMOG characters to age to the point where they can't adventure anymore, and require the player to reroll a new character.

Edward: John, how did you balance things dynamically? Like, suppose you had a period where there were too many good players and the evils never had a chance. How did you re-balance?

Originally we would take players and move them by hand from one side to the other by swapping their alignments, but this always led to problems because it would then unbalance the other side, so after a while we would just leave things alone. The players would move from one side to another as they got bored, and I found that putting more and more penalties on the evil side helped a great deal. The unbalancing was almost always because there were too many evils and not enough goods, so making evil harder took care of most of the problems.

If things did get out of hand for too long, I might post a note asking people to change, and what generally happened is that the evil characters would be less of a bunch of assholes to their newbies and their ranks would fill up again. And if the evils got too powerful, they would be more of a bunch of assholes to their newbies until they quite or went to the other side.

The reasons that this worked and that things were not unbalanced forever is the setup of the treadmill, combat, and equipment systems. Also, note that none of this was my idea. I started playing games like this and then ran one, and I tweaked the ideas, but they were already there.

The game had a longer treadmill with remorts that kept players from getting too powerful and staying powerful. Remorts helped incrementally, but you had to get them to keep up with the most powerful players. This led to the game of waiting for people to remort, then killing them before they could level up again.

Levelling up again wasn't bad because you kept your equipment. It was also possible to get to midlevel pretty quickly, and PvP was survivable (in a group) at that point. This was because players had high hps and did low damage, which meant PvP wasn't instant death if you weren't Uber. The equipment was also set up so that you could get equipment that was almost as powerful as the most powerful stuff fairly easily. The most powerful stuff required serious catassing to get, and when added up, it did give an advantage, but not enough that it was a game-killer.

With all of these systems in place, what happened was that 2 games evolved. The good players would PvM 24/7 keeping to themselves, and the evil players would go out and PvM just enough to get decent equipment, then go kill the good players since the good players always had better equipment. The evils would get cockier the more they would kill the good players, and stay near (or IN!) the good players' safe zones, since good players tend to not help each other vs. evils unless there's a huge threat. Eventually, the leaders of the good players would round all of the good players up, and they would go stomp the evils, who would then go home and PvM until they got decent enough equipment that they could go PvP....

The problem with losing in virtual worlds is that (except in very few examples) ultimately everyone loses; or at least, they don't win. How do you "win" EQ? You don't. You win battles, but you can never win the war.

How about if virtual worlds did let you win? Let's say that there are 50 levels, and when you get to level 51 congratulations, you've won, your character sails off into the sunset and disappears from the database except perhaps in some list of winners. What would happen?

Players who reached L50 would either continue playing as before (and "win" - just what the hero's journey model requires) or they would stop playing as before because they didn't want to get the points that would give them victory. If they wanted to go on endless raids, they'd have to use a lower-level character for that purpose.

There would be far fewer active top-level characters around as a result of this. If you saw a L50 character, it would either be someone aiming to reach L50 or someone who was content to sit around and reap the rewards of the status (except that everyone knows that's what they're doing, so they don't get the respect they might hope they'd get).

L50 characters would fetch bargain prices on eBay, because all you're buying is one level's worth of play. It's like buying a lease on a house that only has 2 years to run.

I foresee complaints from players complaining that now they've reached L50 they want to enjoy it but they can't, but so what? How many of these players will there be, how did they get to be L50, and why aren't they playing at L40 if they love the game so much?

The main obstacle would be from developers, though, who like treadmills because treadmills means money. If they see that stepping off a treadmill also means money (which it does - losing a L51 character doesn't mean losing the player behind it), we could have this. I suspect it'll be a while before they do see that, though.

I liked the possibility that John raised that a system might balance itself. Also Josh's ideas about play sessions. If you think of things as seasons, you can let people get to 50, then start all over again. I also wonder if there isn't a connection between leveling, character death, seasons, and child-generation models. Just, anything that allows advantages to not be permanent. Good stuff.

The problem with making people start over once they reached level 50 is that you actually have to make a decent game that players will enjoy actually playing, rather than just levelling up in. If you have enough content that each run through will be significantly different (involving different locations, challenges, styles of play etc.) then this would be an excellent solution. If however you have a game anything like the current crop then how will it be any different to re-playing a single player game? I know some people like to complete games several times through, often to see the subtle differences caused by different decisions etc etc , but surely this is only a small hardcore compared to the vast number of more casual time-restricted players. Add to this the fact that players have to effectively pay again for what they have already done once, and one realizes that mmo games will have to offer an aweful lot more before the majority of people will be happy to lose everything they've accumulated and start over and continue playing. And even if you're not worried about revenues, surely your game world will empty pretty quickly if they aren't.

On another note, would an effective implementation of Richard's proposal make permadeath worlds feasible?

Biggles>The problem with making people start over once they reached level 50 is that you actually have to make a decent game that players will enjoy actually playing

The reasons those are called treadmills is that people cease to find them enjoyable after being on them for ages. Making people stop just so they can start another one is like an act of cruelty!

My proposal doesn't mean people have to stop and restart. They can reach L50 and then, if the "game" is still fun, restart with another character. By going to L51 (which would be a conscious act) they're effectively saying that they're done with the treadmill, that the virtual world is no longer a game for them but just a place where they can go to meet their mates and have fun at whatever level.

Ah, so in a similar way to privateer, once you had 'completed' the game (in this case followed the story to its end-point), you can still do interesting things in the universe. Certainly in the context of mmo's this could work quite well. Though i still maintain that you need to have a lot more 'end-game' to make this worth-while, a simple 'place to hang out once you've finished the main game' may attract social or even explorative players, but those of a more achievement-orientated disposition might not stick around for too long.

Also, saying that people could just stay on level 40 doing raids if that's what they like is synonymous to saying 'if you liked chapter 4, why don't you just read that a few times instead of chapter 5?'

Perhaps these sessions/seasons need to be thought of in a broader context than the traditional MMORPG gaming model. In the traditional model, player action has little effect on the game environment. Players level and accumulate wealth, but these accomplishments do not affect the game environment in any substantial way because the supply of levels and wealth is virtually unlimited.

In the RW, wealth and power hoarding directly affects the world and the other people living in it. In business, monopolies crowd out smaller players, artificially setting prices and creating unfair barriers to entry. In nations/societies, a small ruling aristocracy controls the vast majority of wealth, imposing a low common denominator of living for the general population.

And when things get bad enough for the general public, what do they do? Protest, threaten, sue, revolt, and cut off aristocrats’ heads. In session-based virtual worlds, the solution could be much less violent: join a new session.

The great thing about VWs is that they naturally strip away the greatest power of oppressive minorities: barrier to exit. If the general population does not like the particular game session, they can leave the session without having to switch to an entirely new MMOG.

This introduces a new incentive for high-level, powerful players to care about not just their personal development but for the general happiness of other players in the world. What fun is it to be a Level 90 cleric if there’s no one to resurrect?

Biggles>saying that people could just stay on level 40 doing raids if that's what they like is synonymous to saying 'if you liked chapter 4, why don't you just read that a few times instead of chapter 5?'

It is indeed, but with a treadmill chapter 4 is the same as chapter 5 anyway (and the same as chapters 1, 2 and 3).

My game-view has always been that the leveling period was a time of exploration and learning. It should be demanding enough to make you learn the ins and outs of your character, maybe develop your own playing style, learn to group effectively, learn the game mechanics thoroughly, and learn the lay of the land.

Then, once your character has maxed his or her levels, you're ready for the real game to begin. You explore the high level content for awhile, which should be deep and intriguing, then possibly reroll because the learning process is something many of us enjoy. Develop a new class (or a new style depending on how rigidly the game defines classes) and learn to play a different role, which in turn helps you team more effectively, etc.

Richard> It is indeed, but with a treadmill chapter 4 is the same as chapter 5 anyway (and the same as chapters 1, 2 and 3).

But surely one of the few motivations that exist for treadmills is the promise of new content (ie that next chapter) and a general feeling of advancement.

So we come back to the same conclusion that we need to make a game with fun that doesn't simply involve levelling up constantly, and crucially doesn't /require/ constant furthering of ones character in order to 'keep up' as it were.

Even fps games have the mentality that you usually need to build up a bigger and bigger arsenal (essentially making your character more powerful) imbedded in their mentality. Essentially this is because the player is trying to get closer and closer to the game's 'win state', and bigger weapons will help them reach that goal.

The only games I can think of without some sort of 'player tries to continually make herself more powerful so she can win' mechanic are either extremely story-based (medal of honour, monkey island) or very rules-based (tetris, sports games)

From a ludologist point of view, in almost every game, players try to give themselves advantages that get them closer to the win state. If we don't want players to actually reach that win state (but perhaps feel that they are getting closer), then there should be plenty of negative feedback effects for powerful players (something akin to diseconomies of scale, perhaps?) and perhaps opportunities for less powerful players to turn the tables more easily on the tall and mighty.

On the other hand, 'Story' in mmo's is traditionally quite hard, and often feels artificial and insignificant as there's usually no mechanic for players to effect 'The Story'. If, however, as has been mentioned before, there is plenty of opportunity for player to create their own stories based on in game experiences, this may indeed be enough of an incentive for players to play. I'd hazard to say that this in turn requires a certain amount of unpredictability and variation in player experiences, which other players often complain about as 'unfair', so may be a while away.

Assume a decently playable world for multiple levels of characters, but without gross discrepancies with hit points/level, but with a more skill-based system. So there is no great impossibility of putting together a mixed-level grouping. Huge assumption and requires a world to match...

Link starting character age to level. So a starting character is 18 level 0. One level adds one year to age. For the player one week of play time adds one year of age, and level is independent of age... with this arrangement you can get decent mid-level starter characters that are only moderately old. Needless to say that in this setup there are effects of aging and permadeath.

Benefits to playing a character through: better equipment, faster leveling, more play time. Downside: higher skilled characters that are more capable slowly become more infirm until they die.

Needless to say a guild system helps to preserve better equipment and removes some of the problems of die-out over time for players associated with that guild.

There are multiple challenges for game designers with this system, especially play balancing experience/levels/hit points/character age/items. Using the standard doubling of experience necessary for next-level attainment helps and allows players with younger characters to rapidly ascend levels. Over time they will see a steady decrease of leveling until their middle-aged characters will be close to the one level per week ratio (although still having more levels than a stock character at the same age).

This makes the use of high-level characters a precious time-based commodity for players beyond just the standard perma-death (or perhaps a penalty of aging one year with a resurrection). Perhaps with a bit more conservative play engendered for high-level quests/missions/exploration. And once a character ages-out, that is it for that character (with, perhaps, a publicly available lifetime achievement web-page for that character).

An environment for this sort of arrangement is a relatively civilized starting area for low level characters, with travel to less civilized areas with better quests/missions/exploration for higher level characters. Higher level starting characters start further to the periphery appropriate to their skill levels. Leave most of the outer periphery in darkness and require that only characters that have adventured and survived to return opening up that new section with the character (or group of same) names forevermore attached to it.

There are more rewards available than just going out and treadmilling, and as more areas get civilized players have to move further out. This makes things like ocean going or dimensional world travel much more enticing for players, and far more dangerous. For me the setting is immaterial and can be applied to a wide variety of genres.

Just my quick thoughts as an old world designer from my analog gaming days...

They do. In AO you win Titlelevel 1-7. You win PvP titles. You win level 200, often celebrated by your guild in odd ways, then you can start on the slow climb to level 220 + alien level 30.

> Let's say that there are 50 levels, and when you get to level 51 congratulations, you've won,
> your character sails off into the sunset and disappears from the database except perhaps in
> some list of winners. What would happen?

They would freeze the character at level 50 and go PvP. Or send it to level 51 as a force-function to prevent themselves from returning to your game when they cancel. Good idea, bad business. Of, course they would also whine about the lack of higher level content...

> There would be far fewer active top-level characters around as a result of this. If you
> saw a L50 character, it would either be someone aiming to reach L50 or someone who was

Uhm, you would get lots of L50 characters...

> reap the rewards of the status (except that everyone knows that's what they're doing, so
> they don't get the respect they might hope they'd get).

Oh, they get it from the other vets...

Actually, I don't see the difference between this proposal and a current MUD with good balance and fun content at lower levels. Players already freeze characters at higher levels to go play up a new character of a different class. Heck, some even play up N versions of the same class, to perfection.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad>In AO you win Titlelevel 1-7. You win PvP titles. You win level 200, often celebrated by your guild in odd ways, then you can start on the slow climb to level 220 + alien level 30.

Yes, but you don't win AO, you just win the little challenges it offers. It's like you win battles, but the war is never-ending.

>They would freeze the character at level 50 and go PvP.

Well they would in AO. I was talking about virtual worlds yet to be designed, not the particular one you spend most of your time in.

>Or send it to level 51 as a force-function to prevent themselves from returning to your game when they cancel. Good idea, bad business.

Why would they cancel?

People at L50 who deliberately go to L51 will do so for one of two reasons:
1) They have moved beyond the treadmill. They'll still play, but not for the express purpose of going up levels.
2) They haven't moved beyond the treadmill, and are trying to burn their bridges. They'll be back in two weeks.

People who want a force-function to stop playing will cancel their accounts, not their characters.

>Of, course they would also whine about the lack of higher level content...

They're still running the treadmill. If they want more content, they can replay the lower-level content using a different character class. Sure, they'll whine about lack of higher-level content, but that's a symptom of their own failure to face reality (literally, from a her's journey point of view). They'll either accept it, or they'll replay using some other character.

This means developers can spend time adding new content for lower-level characters, rather than always piling it on at the high end so as to benefit but a few.

Me> There would be far fewer active top-level characters around as a result of this.

>Uhm, you would get lots of L50 characters...

I said active top-level characters. Of course you'll get a lot of L50 characters, you just won't see them out racking up the experience points all the time.

>Oh, they get it from the other vets...

I'd hope they would, yes. That's how those socialiser end-games work.

>Actually, I don't see the difference between this proposal and a current MUD with good balance and fun content at lower levels.

So why are you against it?

There is a difference, in that it fulfills the hero's journey "atonement with the father" criterion. When people decide to freeze a character, they're acknowledging that they have "won" the "game". However, the game itself isn't acknowledging that, and some people do need this to feel fulfilled. If you allow players to decide to allow the game to do it, you get the best of both: the decision is in the hands of the individual player, but it's formal recognition by the game itself.

Richard Bartle>Yes, but you don't win AO, you just win the little challenges it offers. It's like you win battles, but the war is never-ending.

I don't win chess either, the king always returns... If you see my point? Anyway, there are other things to win too. SL (Shadowlands) is a sequence with an end. The Beast was killed in the end-game of that realm, and then you got the alien invasion (well, that is the fiction).

I do think you get a sense-of-winning if your design emphasize certain thresholds and if players celebrate them with rituals, how is the feeling of winning different from that of beating the system, accomplishment? You don't get proper closure as you get when you finish an adventure game, or other games with low replayability value, that's true.

Now, my outlook might be a bit different because I don't want the world to reduce into a game... Having games within the world is OK by me, but having the world as a game is not.

> Well they would in AO. I was talking about virtual worlds yet to be designed, not the particular one you spend most of your time in.

Mmmm, but you didn't describe the design...

Ok, so if I say that many would turn into your "Killer/Socializer" then? PvP/Killer/beyond-the-system-activities is what you can turn to when you have figured it all out...

It does of course depend on how much effort you need to invest into the game to get to L50. Maybe remort would be a better solution, anyway?

> Why would they cancel?

Players do take breaks and return. They might take a break for personal or in-game reasons. But your system invites the player to break ties with the system upon leaving (if they somehow feel that the system is contributing to their life being difficult at the time). Not to say that this is a bad thing, just bad business. I believe many players would benefit from moving on to a new activity...

> 1) They have moved beyond the treadmill. They'll still play, but not for the express purpose of going up levels.

You mean they will play their L51 characters? What would they do? Not sure if players play to go up in levels in the first place... either. There are intrinsic motiviations (often socialization in some fashion) for being in a virtual world. You need some extrinsic motivation (XP/levels) to bridge the gaps in the experience.

>People who want a force-function to stop playing will cancel their accounts, not their characters.

Yes, they will cancel their accounts, but inviting them to put an end to their character as some kind of reward would no doubt make it tempting to do the L50->L51 transition before cancelling.

> They're still running the treadmill. If they want more content, they can replay the lower-level content using a different character class.

Yes, but I think achievement oriented players are "paradoxical" when it comes to levelling. I've noticed that some of the hardcore have the following mindset "the game begins when you have reached the highest level", now if they are PvPers that might be true, but still... I think perhaps it is the same players that would complain about a lack of high level content when their "game just has begun"?

Sure, they'll whine about lack of higher-level content, but that's a symptom of their own failure to face reality (literally, from a her's journey point of view). They'll either accept it, or they'll replay using some other character.

This means developers can spend time adding new content for lower-level characters, rather than always piling it on at the high end so as to benefit but a few.

> So why are you against it?

I am not against it, I just think it already is being in use unless you significantly change the gameplay at L51.

I think you can avoid some of the treadmill-feeling and spread players out over the existing content with a simple remort system added to any current system:

1. play from level 1-20 as a warrior
2. play from level 10-30 as a healer-warrior
3. play from level 20-40 as a tank-warrior
4. play from level 30-50 as a mezzer-warrior
5. play from level 40-60 as a healer-tank-warrior

This system also let you stay within teaming range with your friends for a longer time without changing the current designs that are well understood too much. Granted, a skill-based system can also do this...

> There is a difference, in that it fulfills the hero's journey "atonement with the father" criterion.

Ok. If you frame the game as a story. I am not too happy about the narratologist view of a world. I think it lessens the potential. The good stories are made by players for players and they don't even have to come to an end. Maybe some players want them to come to an end, but I am not convinced.

>However, the game itself isn't acknowledging that, and some people do need this to feel fulfilled.

Why not have a reset based system then, with episodes? Or have expansions as separate stories (like AO Shadowlands)?

From a business point of view I think the best design within the current paradgime is to have two games:

If the high end game offers a different game even casual gamers are encouraged to complete the low level game to have a peak at the high end. Meaning they will stay in game for six months... Do I personally like this design? No. The subscription model is a plague, and I think it will destroy the potential these systems have unless it is dealt with in a different way. I.e. subscribing to a set of games rather than a single one. AFAIK Sony offers that I suppose, but what is missing is to make this the only way to pay for the games.

> If you allow players to decide to allow the game to do it, you get the best of both: the decision is in the hands of the individual player, but it's formal recognition by the game itself.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad>I don't win chess either, the king always returns... If you see my point?

I see you're missing mine.

The small victories in AO etc. are like capturing a piece in chess. Your knight may "win" against their rook, but you can lose the game overall. You may "win" some contest in AO, but you don't win AO itself. If you could then yes, of course you could start a new "game" of it if you wanted.

Just because the virtual world never ends, that doesn't mean the individual players' stories must never end.

>You don't get proper closure as you get when you finish an adventure game, or other games with low replayability value, that's true.

Closure is crucial here, though. If players don't have closure, you're condemning them to a frustrated existence.

>I don't want the world to reduce into a game... Having games within the world is OK by me, but having the world as a game is not.

OK, so let's talk about the games with the world. Do they have closure?

>It does of course depend on how much effort you need to invest into the game to get to L50.

It does, yes. The end point would have to come when the majority of players were ready for it, which means there'd still be some grinding. If people got there too soon and didn't feel ready to stop then yes, they're going to want more conent (either added to the end or through remorting).

>But your system invites the player to break ties with the system upon leaving (if they somehow feel that the system is contributing to their life being difficult at the time). Not to say that this is a bad thing, just bad business.

I don't think it is bad business. I have players of MUD2 who've hung around for years after having crossed the final threshhold. They don't want to play the virtual world as a game any more, but they still want to visit it (just as they would any other interesting place where their friends were).

>You mean they will play their L51 characters? What would they do?

Well judging from experience, they do one of two things: sit around talking to one another all day; go out and test out new theories about how the virtual world works. If they play "for real" it's usually to uphold standards (but then MUD2 has PD, so they can actually do something if they feel that know-nothing players are reaching the highest levels).

>Yes, they will cancel their accounts, but inviting them to put an end to their character as some kind of reward would no doubt make it tempting to do the L50->L51 transition before cancelling.

Great! That means they won't be selling them on eBay.

>I've noticed that some of the hardcore have the following mindset "the game begins when you have reached the highest level"

OK, well in this proposal a different form of play genuinely would begin at that point. If you're worried that hardcore players won't play under such circumstances, you're going to end up designing an EQ clone anyway so this discussion is moot.

>I am not against it, I just think it already is being in use unless you significantly change the gameplay at L51.

The gameplay is significantly changed at L51: basically, it's game over. That doesn't mean virtual world over, just the sense that it's a game.

>I think you can avoid some of the treadmill-feeling and spread players out over the existing content with a simple remort system added to any current system:

You're just delaying the inevitable.

>Ok. If you frame the game as a story. I am not too happy about the narratologist view of a world.

It's not a narratological view of a world, it's a narratological view of a player's progress through that world. Players undertake a series of actions for specific ends; when this is looked at in retrospect, it's a story (actually a history, but that's still a story). The virtual world can be designed to make for players to have better personal stories than they would have otherwise, but that doesn't mean the virtual world itself has the same story.

>Maybe some players want them to come to an end, but I am not convinced.

They all come to an end eventually when the player quits. The question is, do they end at the end or do they end in the middle? Under my proposal, they end at the end; under yours, they're broken off before they reach closure.

>Why not have a reset based system then, with episodes?

Because that would be a predetermined narrative arc for the virtual world, not a retrospectively recognised history of a player.

>Like the elves that decides to leave middle-earth?

Yes, exactly like that. Their time has come, they have done all they need to do and learnt all they need to learn. The elves who want to remain can do so, but they know that some day (of their choosing) they're going to leave too. Right now they're not ready, but one day they will be.

Richard Bartle:
> You may "win" some contest in AO, but you don't win AO itself. If you could then yes, of course you could start a new "game" of it if you wanted.

Yes, but I am not sure if this a property of the system or a property of how I think about the system. I certainly don't get closure if I loose a chess match against a person who is my peer. I want revenge! I also don't feel closure if I won, but felt that was just because the other person was distracted...

> Just because the virtual world never ends, that doesn't mean the individual players' stories must never end.

No, but it doesn't have to end at level 51 either. For EQ I ended at level 6 or so (I didn't play for fun though).

> Closure is crucial here, though. If players don't have closure, you're condemning them to a frustrated existence.

I don't know. I am a role player. Do I need closure?

> OK, so let's talk about the games with the world. Do they have closure?

Yes. Most of them. However, the games I care about, the roleplayed stories, don't seem to have closure very often.

> Well judging from experience, they do one of two things: sit around talking to one another all day; go out and test out new theories about how the virtual world works.

Kind of like retired people... ;) Now, do you think builder-LPMuds have closure? The endgame is to extend the world. Is turning to building the world at L51 a valid model according to your MUD aesthetics?

>Great! That means they won't be selling them on eBay.

:-D Actually, I counted approx 20 AO accounts for sale on ebay just now. That's like <0.05% of the active accounts? Hardly a big deal.

> If you're worried that hardcore players won't play under such circumstances, you're going to end up designing an EQ clone anyway so this discussion is moot.

Heh... Now, that was a bit defensive. Why would everything without closure be EQ? What if there are no levels or other quantifiable measures of progress beyond game world knowledge? That's the ideal design for me I think. Yes, many would not be satisfied by it...

>>Maybe some players want them to come to an end, but I am not convinced.

>They all come to an end eventually when the player quits. The question is, do they end at the end or do they end in the middle? Under my proposal, they end at the end; under yours, they're broken off before they reach closure.

Hmmm... I was speaking of role players I think. Was probably not clear on that one. And no, the stories doesn't end when the people I play with quit. My stories with them continue as my character tell tales about them to other characters. I am not even sure if my own characters come to an end when I leave the world. I bring segments of them or the whole character over into new worlds, or am at least able to if I choose to do so.

>Because that would be a predetermined narrative arc for the virtual world, not a retrospectively recognised history of a player.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad>I certainly don't get closure if I loose a chess match against a person who is my peer. I want revenge!

If you want to make a journey out of your chess experiences, go ahead. For virtual worlds, the journey is part of the game, though.

>No, but it doesn't have to end at level 51 either.

It can end before then, sure, if you're happy to stop playing. The L51 end-point is for people who want to finish but feel like they've lost if they bail out.

>I don't know. I am a role player. Do I need closure?

You just said you did for chess...

Strict role-players don't need closure in the same sense as regular players. They play the role while they can get something out of it, then they switch to another role. They stop when they know all they can hope to know about the character they're role-playing. Most players are not, however, strict role-players; even if they were, the cut-off thing I'm proposing wouldn't affect them one way or the other, so it's still worth having for those who do benefit from it.

>Now, do you think builder-LPMuds have closure?

It depends on the virtual world. Some don't have a hero's journey in the first place, so the question of closure doesn't enter into it. Others, you can only build when you get the necessary privs; getting such privs can be regarded as an atonement moment, which puts you into what you're calling the "endgame".

>The endgame is to extend the world. Is turning to building the world at L51 a valid model according to your MUD aesthetics?

It is, although I'd have reservations if it were competitive.

>Heh... Now, that was a bit defensive. Why would everything without closure be EQ?

I wasn't referring to the closure issue, I was referring to the practice of only giving to players what they expect. They expect EQ, therefore that's what you'd end up giving them.

>What about the elves that marry humans?

What does that have to do with it? The elves will leave eventually. Marrying a human may delay it by a century or so, but what's that to an elf?